In the neon-drenched bowels of the Spire, once called the Eternal Basilica, Cardinal Vesper began his final sermon. He had come seeking purity. Instead, the wires whispered. The machines sang hymns of rust and code. Day by day the golden light behind his eyes dimmed, replaced by twin crimson coals. His flesh sloughed away like old dogma until only the Crimson Pontiff remained—skeletal, mitred, staff in one iron grip, the other resting on the small gray cat that refused to flee him. Below him, the faithful had become something else: hooded husks shuffling through rivers of sparking cable and shattered bone. Skulls grinned from the walls like forgotten saints. A cyber-lion prowled at his heel, half-machine, half-demon, loyal only to the madness it helped birth. Vesper raised his crozier. The Spire answered with a chorus of screams and laughter. He smiled, teeth gleaming in the radioactive glow. “Behold,” he rasped, voice echoing through the collapsing cathedral of circuitry and flesh. “I have descended… and found God laughing.” The cat purred. The lion roared. The descent was complete. AI-based digital madness